In a wireless cellular communication system, a geographical condition in a cell, a distance between a terminal and a base station, or movement of the terminal may deteriorate a channel condition and block the smooth communication between the terminal and the base station. For example, even in a service coverage of the base station, a building such as office building or a residence forms a shadow area.
In this respect, the wireless communication system provides a femtocell service to address the service problem in the shadow area and to offer a high-rate data service. Herein, the femtocell indicates a service coverage of a small base station that accesses a mobile communication core network over an indoor broadband network. Hereinafter, the small base station is referred to as a femto base station.
Since the femto base station uses a commercial broadband network installed indoor such as Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL) or cable modem, as a backhaul, users can install the femto base station by themselves.
As the femto base station is installed by the user in person inside the house, the power for the femto base station should be supplied directly from the house or the office. Additionally, since a plurality of femto base station may reside in a service coverage of a macro base station, the operation of the femto base station can interfere with terminals of the other femto cells or terminals of the macro cell.
Thus, what is needed is a method for saving the power of the femto base station and mitigating the interference caused by the operation of the femto base station in the wireless communication system which provides the femtocell.